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My Summer with Dr. Singletary - Part 2, from Volume V., the Works of Whittier: Tales and Sketches by John Greenleaf Whittier
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me frivolous and selfish."

So would Dr. Singletary discourse as we strolled over Blueberry Hill, or
drove along the narrow willow-shaded road which follows the windings of
the river. He had read and thought much in his retired, solitary life,
and was evidently well satisfied to find in me a gratified listener. He
talked well and fluently, with little regard to logical sequence, and
with something of the dogmatism natural to one whose opinions had seldom
been subjected to scrutiny. He seemed equally at home in the most
abstruse questions of theology and metaphysics, and in the more
practical matters of mackerel-fishing, corn-growing, and cattle-raising.
It was manifest that to his book lore he had added that patient and
close observation of the processes of Nature which often places the
unlettered ploughman and mechanic on a higher level of available
intelligence than that occupied by professors and school men. To him
nothing which had its root in the eternal verities of Nature was "common
or unclean." The blacksmith, subjecting to his will the swart genii of
the mines of coal and iron; the potter, with his "power over the clay;"
the skipper, who had tossed in his frail fishing-smack among the
icebergs of Labrador; the farmer, who had won from Nature the occult
secrets of her woods and fields; and even the vagabond hunter and
angler, familiar with the habits of animals and the migration of birds
and fishes,--had been his instructors; and he was not ashamed to
acknowledge that they had taught him more than college or library.




CHAPTER III.

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